Sybil, or the Two Nations, by Benjamin Disraeli

Book i

Chapter 1

“I’ll take the odds against Caravan.”

“In poneys?”

“Done.”

And Lord Milford, a young noble, entered in his book the bet which he had just made with Mr Latour, a grey headed
member of the Jockey Club.

It was the eve of the Derby of 1837. In a vast and golden saloon, that in its decorations would have become, and in
its splendour would not have disgraced, Versailles in the days of the grand monarch, were assembled many whose hearts
beat at the thought of the morrow, and whose brains still laboured to control its fortunes to their advantage.

“They say that Caravan looks puffy,” lisped in a low voice a young man, lounging on the edge of a buhl table that
had once belonged to a Mortemart, and dangling a rich cane with affected indifference in order to conceal his anxiety
from all, except the person whom he addressed.

“They are taking seven to two against him freely over the way,” was the reply. “I believe it’s all right.”

“Do you know I dreamed last night something about Mango,” continued the gentleman with the cane, and with a look of
uneasy superstition.

His companion shook his head.

“Well,” continued the gentleman with the cane, “I have no opinion of him. I gave Charles Egremont the odds against
Mango this morning; he goes with us, you know. By the bye, who is our fourth?”

“I thought of Milford,” was the reply in an under tone. “What say you?”

“Milford is going with St James and Punch Hughes.”

“Well, let us come into supper, and we shall see some fellow we like.”

So saying, the companions, taking their course through more than one chamber, entered an apartment of less
dimensions than the principal saloon, but not less sumptuous in its general appearance. The gleaming lustres poured a
flood of soft yet brilliant light over a plateau glittering with gold plate, and fragrant with exotics embedded in
vases of rare porcelain. The seats on each side of the table were occupied by persons consuming, with a heedless air,
delicacies for which they had no appetite; while the conversation in general consisted of flying phrases referring to
the impending event of the great day that had already dawned.

“Come from Lady St Julian’s, Fitz?” said a youth of very tender years, and whose fair visage was as downy and as
blooming as the peach from which with a languid air he withdrew his lips to make this inquiry of the gentleman with the
cane.

“Well, will you go to Epsom with us tomorrow, Alfred?” said Lord Fitzheron. “I take Berners and Charles Egremont,
and with you our party will be perfect.”

“I feel so cursed blase!” exclaimed the boy in a tone of elegant anguish.

“It will give you a fillip, Alfred,” said Mr Berners; “do you all the good in the world.”

“Nothing can do me good,” said Alfred, throwing away his almost untasted peach, “I should be quite content if
anything could do me harm. Waiter, bring me a tumbler of Badminton.”

“And bring me one too,” sighed out Lord Eugene De Vere, who was a year older than Alfred Mountchesney, his companion
and brother in listlessness. Both had exhausted life in their teens, and all that remained for them was to mourn, amid
the ruins of their reminiscences, over the extinction of excitement.

“Well, Eugene, suppose you come with us.” said Lord Fitzheron.

“I think I shall go down to Hampton Court and play tennis,” said Lord Eugene. “As it is the Derby, nobody will be
there.”

“And I will go with you, Eugene,” said Alfred Mountchesney, “and we will dine together afterwards at the Toy.
Anything is better than dining in this infernal London.”

“Well, for my part,” said Mr Berners. “I do not like your suburban dinners. You always get something you can’t eat,
and cursed bad wine.”

“I rather like bad wine,” said Mr Mountchesney; “one gets so bored with good wine.”

“Do you want the odds against Hybiscus, Berners?” said a guardsman looking up from his book, which he had been very
intently studying.

“All I want is some supper, and as you are not using your place —”

“You shall have it. Oh! here’s Milford, he will give them me.”

And at this moment entered the room the young nobleman whom we have before mentioned, accompanied by an individual
who was approaching perhaps the termination of his fifth lustre but whose general air rather betokened even a less
experienced time of life. Tall, with a well-proportioned figure and a graceful carriage, his countenance touched with a
sensibility that at once engages the affections. Charles Egremont was not only admired by that sex, whose approval
generally secures men enemies among their fellows, but was at the same time the favourite of his own.

“Ah, Egremont! come and sit here,” exclaimed more than one banqueter.

“I saw you waltzing with the little Bertie, old fellow,” said Lord Fitzheron, “and therefore did not stay to speak
to you, as I thought we should meet here. I am to call for you, mind.”

“How shall we all feel this time tomorrow?” said Egremont, smiling.

“The happiest fellow at this moment must be Cockie Graves,” said Lord Milford. “He can have no suspense I have been
looking over his book, and I defy him, whatever happens, not to lose.”

“Poor Cockie.” said Mr Berners; “he has asked me to dine with him at the Clarendon on Saturday.”

“Cockie is a very good Cockie,” said Lord Milford, “and Caravan is a very good horse; and if any gentleman sportsman
present wishes to give seven to two, I will take him to any amount.”

“My book is made up,” said Egremont; “and I stand or fall by Caravan.”

“How close it is to-night!” said Egremont. “Waiter, give me some Seltzer water; and open another window; open them
all.”

At this moment an influx of guests intimated that the assembly at Lady St Julian’s was broken up. Many at the table
rose and yielded their places, clustering round the chimney-piece, or forming in various groups, and discussing the
great question. Several of those who had recently entered were votaries of Rat-trap, the favourite, and quite prepared,
from all the information that had reached them, to back their opinions valiantly. The conversation had now become
general and animated, or rather there was a medley of voices in which little was distinguished except the names of
horses and the amount of odds. In the midst of all this, waiters glided about handing incomprehensible mixtures bearing
aristocratic names; mystical combinations of French wines and German waters, flavoured with slices of Portugal fruits,
and cooled with lumps of American ice, compositions which immortalized the creative genius of some high patrician
name.

“By Jove! that’s a flash,” exclaimed Lord Milford, as a blaze of lightning seemed to suffuse the chamber, and the
beaming lustres turned white and ghastly in the glare.

The thunder rolled over the building. There was a dead silence. Was it going to rain? Was it going to pour? Was the
storm confined to the metropolis? Would it reach Epsom? A deluge, and the course would be a quagmire, and strength
might baffle speed.

Another flash, another explosion, the hissing noise of rain. Lord Milford moved aside, and jealous of the eye of
another, read a letter from Chifney, and in a few minutes afterwards offered to take the odds against Pocket Hercules.
Mr Latour walked to the window, surveyed the heavens, sighed that there was not time to send his tiger from the door to
Epsom, and get information whether the storm had reached the Surrey hills, for to-night’s operations. It was too late.
So he took a rusk and a glass of lemonade, and retired to rest with a cool head and a cooler heart.

The storm raged, the incessant flash played as it were round the burnished cornice of the chamber, and threw a lurid
hue on the scenes of Watteau and Boucher that sparkled in the medallions over the lofty doors. The thunderbolts seemed
to descend in clattering confusion upon the roof. Sometimes there was a moment of dead silence, broken only by the
pattering of the rain in the street without, or the pattering of the dice in a chamber at hand. Then horses were
backed, bets made, and there were loud and frequent calls for brimming goblets from hurrying waiters, distracted by the
lightning and deafened by the peal. It seemed a scene and a supper where the marble guest of Juan might have been
expected, and had he arrived, he would have found probably hearts as bold and spirits as reckless as he encountered in
Andalusia.

Chapter 2

“Will any one do anything about Hybiscus?” sang out a gentleman in the ring at Epsom. It was full of
eager groups; round the betting post a swarming cluster, while the magic circle itself was surrounded by a host of
horsemen shouting from their saddles the odds they were ready to receive or give, and the names of the horses they were
prepared to back or to oppose.

“Will any one do anything about Hybiscus?”

“I’ll give you five to one,” said a tall, stiff Saxon peer, in a white great coat.

“No; I’ll take six.”

The tall, stiff peer in the white great coat mused for a moment with his pencil at his lip, and then said, “Well,
I’ll give you six. What do you say about Mango?”

“Eleven to two against Mango,” called out a little humpbacked man in a shrill voice, but with the air of one who was
master of his work.

“I should like to do a little business with you, Mr Chippendale,” said Lord Milford in a coaxing tone, “but I must
have six to one.”

“Eleven to two, and no mistake,” said this keeper of a second-rate gaming-house, who, known by the flattering
appellation of Hump Chippendale, now turned with malignant abruptness from the heir apparent of an English earldom.

“You shall have six to one, my Lord,” said Captain Spruce, a debonair personage with a well-turned silk hat arranged
a little aside, his coloured cravat tied with precision, his whiskers trimmed like a quickset hedge. Spruce, who had
earned his title of Captain on the plains of Newmarket, which had witnessed for many a year his successful exploits,
had a weakness for the aristocracy, who knowing his graceful infirmity patronized him with condescending dexterity,
acknowledged his existence in Pall Mall as well as at Tattersalls, and thus occasionally got a point more than the
betting out of him. Hump Chippendale had none of these gentle failings; he was a democratic leg, who loved to fleece a
noble, and thought all men were born equal — a consoling creed that was a hedge for his hump.

“Seven to four against the favourite; seven to two against Caravan; eleven to two against Mango. What about
Benedict? Will any one do anything about Pocket Hercules? Thirty to one against Dardanelles.”

“Done.”

“Five and thirty ponies to one against Phosphorus,” shouted a little man vociferously and repeatedly.

“I will give forty,” said Lord Milford. No answer — nothing done.

“Forty to one!” murmured Egremont who stood against Phosphorus. A little nervous, he said to the peer in the white
great coat, “Don’t you think that Phosphorus may after all have some chance?”

“I should be cursed sorry to be deep against him,” said the peer.

Egremont with a quivering lip walked away. He consulted his book; he meditated anxiously. Should he hedge? It was
scarcely worth while to mar the symmetry of his winnings; he stood “so well” by all the favourites; and for a horse at
forty to one. No; he would trust his star, he would not hedge.

“Mr Chippendale,” whispered the peer in the white great coat, “go and press Mr Egremont about Phosphorus. I should
not be surprised if you got a good thing.”

At this moment, a huge, broad-faced, rosy-gilled fellow, with one of those good-humoured yet cunning countenances
that we meet occasionally on the northern side of the Trent, rode up to the ring on a square cob and dismounting
entered the circle. He was a carcase butcher, famous in Carnaby market, and the prime councillor of a distinguished
nobleman for whom privately he betted on commission. His secret service today was to bet against his noble employer’s
own horse, and so he at once sung out, “Twenty to one against Man-trap.”

A young gentleman just launched into the world, and who, proud of his ancient and spreading acres, was now making
his first book, seeing Man-trap marked eighteen to one on the cards, jumped eagerly at this bargain, while Lord
Fitzheron and Mr Berners who were at hand and who in their days had found their names in the book of the carcase
butcher, and grown wise by it, interchanged a smile.

“Mr Egremont will not take,” said Hump Chippendale to the peer in the white great coat.

“You must have been too eager,” said his noble friend.

The ring is up; the last odds declared; all gallop away to the Warren. A few minutes, only a few minutes, and the
event that for twelve months has been the pivot of so much calculation, of such subtile combinations, of such deep
conspiracies, round which the thought and passion of the sporting world have hung like eagles, will be recorded in the
fleeting tablets of the past. But what minutes! Count them by sensation and not by calendars, and each moment is a day
and the race a life. Hogarth in a coarse and yet animated sketch has painted “Before” and “After.” A creative spirit of
a higher vein might develope the simplicity of the idea with sublimer accessories. Pompeius before Pharsalia, Harold
before Hastings, Napoleon before Waterloo, might afford some striking contrasts to the immediate catastrophe of their
fortunes. Finer still the inspired mariner who has just discovered a new world; the sage who has revealed a new planet;
and yet the “Before” and “After” of a first-rate English race, in the degree of its excitement, and sometimes in the
tragic emotions of its close, may vie even with these.

They are saddling the horses; Caravan looks in great condition; and a scornful smile seems to play upon the handsome
features of Pavis, as in the becoming colours of his employer, he gracefully gallops his horse before his admiring
supporters. Egremont in the delight of an English patrician scarcely saw Mango, and never even thought of Phosphorus —
Phosphorus, who, by the bye, was the first horse that showed, with both his forelegs bandaged.

They are off!

As soon as they are well away, Chifney makes the running with Pocket Hercules. Up to the Rubbing House he is
leading; this is the only point the eye can select. Higher up the hill, Caravan, Hybiscus, Benedict, Mahometan,
Phosphorus, Michel Fell, and Rat-trap are with the grey, forming a front rank, and at the new ground the pace has told
its tale, for half a dozen are already out of the race.

The summit is gained; the tactics alter: here Pavis brings up Caravan, with extraordinary severity — the pace round
Tattenham corner terrific; Caravan leading, then Phosphorus a little above him, Mahometan next, Hybiscus fourth.
Rat-trap looking badly, Wisdom, Benedict and another handy. By this time Pocket Hercules has enough, and at the road
the tailing grows at every stride. Here the favourite himself is hors de combat, as well as Dardanelles, and a crowd of
lesser celebrities.

There are now but four left in the race, and of these, two, Hybiscus and Mahometan, are some lengths behind. Now it
is neck and neck between Caravan and Phosphorus. At the stand Caravan has decidedly the best, but just at the post,
Edwards, on Phosphorus, lifts the gallant little horse, and with an extraordinary effort contrives to shove him in by
half a length.

“You look a little low, Charley,” said Lord Fitzheron, as taking their lunch in their drag he poured the champagne
into the glass of Egremont.

Chapter 3

Egremont was the younger brother of an English earl, whose nobility being of nearly three centuries’
date, ranked him among our high and ancient peers, although its origin was more memorable than illustrious. The founder
of the family had been a confidential domestic of one of the favourites of Henry the Eighth, and had contrived to be
appointed one of the commissioners for “visiting and taking the surrenders of divers religious houses.” It came to pass
that divers of these religious houses surrendered themselves eventually to the use and benefit of honest Baldwin
Greymount. The king was touched with the activity and zeal of his commissioner. Not one of them whose reports were so
ample and satisfactory, who could baffle a wily prior with more dexterity, or control a proud abbot with more firmness.
Nor were they well-digested reports alone that were transmitted to the sovereign: they came accompanied with many rare
and curious articles, grateful to the taste of one who was not only a religious reformer but a dilettante; golden
candlesticks and costly chalices; sometimes a jewelled pix; fantastic spoons and patens, rings for the fingers and the
ear; occasionally a fair-written and blazoned manuscript — suitable offering to the royal scholar. Greymount was
noticed; sent for; promoted in the household; knighted; might doubtless have been sworn of the council, and in due time
have become a minister; but his was a discreet ambition — of an accumulative rather than an aspiring character. He
served the king faithfully in all domestic matters that required an unimpassioned, unscrupulous agent; fashioned his
creed and conscience according to the royal model in all its freaks; seized the right moment to get sundry grants of
abbey lands, and contrived in that dangerous age to save both his head and his estate.

The Greymount family having planted themselves in the land, faithful to the policy of the founder, avoided the
public gaze during the troubled period that followed the reformation; and even during the more orderly reign of
Elizabeth, rather sought their increase in alliances than in court favour. But at the commencement of the seventeenth
century, their abbey lands infinitely advanced in value, and their rental swollen by the prudent accumulation of more
than seventy years, a Greymount, who was then a county member, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Marney. The heralds
furnished his pedigree, and assured the world that although the exalted rank and extensive possessions enjoyed at
present by the Greymounts, had their origin immediately in great territorial revolutions of a recent reign, it was not
for a moment to be supposed, that the remote ancestors of the Ecclesiastical Commissioner of 1530 were by any means
obscure. On the contrary, it appeared that they were both Norman and baronial, their real name Egremont, which, in
their patent of peerage the family now resumed.

In the civil wars, the Egremonts pricked by their Norman blood, were cavaliers and fought pretty well. But in 1688,
alarmed at the prevalent impression that King James intended to insist on the restitution of the church estates to
their original purposes, to wit, the education of the people and the maintenance of the poor, the Lord of Marney Abbey
became a warm adherent of “civil and religious liberty,”— the cause for which Hampden had died in the field, and
Russell on the scaffold — and joined the other whig lords, and great lay impropriators, in calling over the Prince of
Orange and a Dutch army, to vindicate those popular principles which, somehow or other, the people would never support.
Profiting by this last pregnant circumstance, the lay Abbot of Marney also in this instance like the other whig lords,
was careful to maintain, while he vindicated the cause of civil and religious liberty, a very loyal and dutiful though
secret correspondence with the court of St Germains.

The great deliverer King William the Third, to whom Lord Marney was a systematic traitor, made the descendant of the
Ecclesiastical Commissioner of Henry the Eighth an English earl; and from that time until the period of our history,
though the Marney family had never produced one individual eminent for civil or military abilities, though the country
was not indebted to them for a single statesman, orator, successful warrior, great lawyer, learned divine, eminent
author, illustrious man of science, they had contrived, if not to engross any great share of public admiration and
love, at least to monopolise no contemptible portion of public money and public dignities. During the seventy years of
almost unbroken whig rule, from the accession of the House of Hanover to the fall of Mr Fox, Marney Abbey had furnished
a never-failing crop of lord privy seals, lord presidents, and lord lieutenants. The family had had their due quota of
garters and governments and bishoprics; admirals without fleets, and generals who fought only in America. They had
glittered in great embassies with clever secretaries at their elbow, and had once governed Ireland when to govern
Ireland was only to apportion the public plunder to a corrupt senate.

Notwithstanding however this prolonged enjoyment of undeserved prosperity, the lay abbots of Marney were not
content. Not that it was satiety that induced dissatisfaction. The Egremonts could feed on. They wanted something more.
Not to be prime ministers or secretaries of state, for they were a shrewd race who knew the length of their tether, and
notwithstanding the encouraging example of his grace of Newcastle, they could not resist the persuasion that some
knowledge of the interests and resources of nations, some power of expressing opinions with propriety, some degree of
respect for the public and for himself, were not altogether indispensable qualifications, even under a Venetian
constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres
and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat
graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the
highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great “civil and religious liberty” families — the
families who in one century plundered the church to gain the property of the people, and in another century changed the
dynasty to gain the power of the crown — had their brows circled with the strawberry leaf. And why should not this
distinction be the high lot also of the descendants of the old gentleman usher of one of King Henry’s plundering
vicar-generals? Why not? True it is, that a grateful sovereign in our days has deemed such distinction the only reward
for half a hundred victories. True it is, that Nelson, after conquering the Mediterranean, died only a Viscount! But
the house of Marney had risen to high rank; counted themselves ancient nobility; and turned up their noses at the
Pratts and the Smiths, the Jenkinsons and the Robinsons of our degenerate days; and never had done anything for the
nation or for their honours. And why should they now? It was unreasonable to expect it. Civil and religious liberty,
that had given them a broad estate and a glittering coronet, to say nothing of half-a-dozen close seats in parliament,
ought clearly to make them dukes.

But the other great whig families who had obtained this honour, and who had done something more for it than spoliate
their church and betray their king, set up their backs against this claim of the Egremonts. The Egremonts had done none
of the work of the last hundred years of political mystification, during which a people without power or education, had
been induced to believe themselves the freest and most enlightened nation in the world, and had submitted to lavish
their blood and treasure, to see their industry crippled and their labour mortgaged, in order to maintain an oligarchy,
that had neither ancient memories to soften nor present services to justify their unprecedented usurpation.

How had the Egremonts contributed to this prodigious result? Their family had furnished none of those artful orators
whose bewildering phrase had fascinated the public intelligence; none of those toilsome patricians whose assiduity in
affairs had convinced their unprivileged fellow-subjects that government was a science, and administration an art,
which demanded the devotion of a peculiar class in the state for their fulfilment and pursuit. The Egremonts had never
said anything that was remembered, or done anything that could be recalled. It was decided by the Great Revolution
families, that they should not be dukes. Infinite was the indignation of the lay Abbot of Marney. He counted his
boroughs, consulted his cousins, and muttered revenge. The opportunity soon offered for the gratification of his
passion.

The situation of the Venetian party in the wane of the eighteenth century had become extremely critical. A young
king was making often fruitless, but always energetic, struggles to emancipate his national royalty from the trammels
of the factious dogeship. More than sixty years of a government of singular corruption had alienated all hearts from
the oligarchy; never indeed much affected by the great body of the people. It could no longer be concealed, that by
virtue of a plausible phrase power had been transferred from the crown to a parliament, the members of which were
appointed by an extremely limited and exclusive class, who owned no responsibility to the country, who debated and
voted in secret, and who were regularly paid by the small knot of great families that by this machinery had secured the
permanent possession of the king’s treasury. Whiggism was putrescent in the nostrils of the nation; we were probably on
the eve of a bloodless yet important revolution; when Rockingham, a virtuous magnifico, alarmed and disgusted, resolved
to revive something of the pristine purity and high-toned energy of the old whig connection; appealed to his “new
generation” from a degenerate age, arrayed under his banner the generous youth of the whig families, and was fortunate
to enlist in the service the supreme genius of Edmund Burke.

Burke effected for the whigs what Bolingbroke in a preceding age had done for the tories: he restored the moral
existence of the party. He taught them to recur to the ancient principles of their connection, and suffused those
principles with all the delusive splendour of his imagination. He raised the tone of their public discourse; he
breathed a high spirit into their public acts. It was in his power to do more for the whigs than St John could do for
his party. The oligarchy, who had found it convenient to attaint Bolingbroke for being the avowed minister of the
English Prince with whom they were always in secret communication, when opinion forced them to consent to his
restitution, had tacked to the amnesty a clause as cowardly as it was unconstitutional, and declared his incompetence
to sit in the parliament of his country. Burke on the contrary fought the whig fight with a two-edged weapon: he was a
great writer; as an orator he was transcendent. In a dearth of that public talent for the possession of which the whigs
have generally been distinguished, Burke came forward and established them alike in the parliament and the country. And
what was his reward? No sooner had a young and dissolute noble, who with some of the aspirations of a Caesar oftener
realised the conduct of a Catiline, appeared on the stage, and after some inglorious tergiversation adopted their
colours, than they transferred to him the command which had been won by wisdom and genius, vindicated by unrivalled
knowledge, and adorned by accomplished eloquence. When the hour arrived for the triumph which he had prepared, he was
not even admitted into the Cabinet, virtually presided over by his graceless pupil, and who, in the profuse suggestions
of his teeming converse, had found the principles and the information which were among the chief claims to public
confidence of Mr Fox.

Hard necessity made Mr Burke submit to the yoke, but the humiliation could never be forgotten. Nemesis favours
genius: the inevitable hour at length arrived. A voice like the Apocalypse sounded over England and even echoed in all
the courts of Europe. Burke poured forth the vials of his hoarded vengeance into the agitated heart of Christendom; he
stimulated the panic of a world by the wild pictures of his inspired imagination; he dashed to the ground the rival who
had robbed him of his hard-earned greatness; rended in twain the proud oligarchy that had dared to use and to insult
him; and followed with servility by the haughtiest and the most timid of its members, amid the frantic exultation of
his country, he placed his heel upon the neck of the ancient serpent.

Among the whig followers of Mr Burke in this memorable defection, among the Devonshires and the Portlands, the
Spencers and the Fitzwilliams, was the Earl of Marney, whom the whigs would not make a duke.

What was his chance of success from Mr Pitt?

If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage, and both qualities are
equally requisite for the undertaking, the world would be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by
Niebuhr. Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of
the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a
complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about as profitable to an Englishman as reading the Republic
of Plato or the Utopia of More, the pages of Gaudentio di Lucca or the adventures of Peter Wilkins.

The influence of races in our early ages, of the church in our middle, and of parties in our modern history, are
three great moving and modifying powers, that must be pursued and analyzed with an untiring, profound, and
unimpassioned spirit, before a guiding ray can be secured. A remarkable feature of our written history is the absence
in its pages of some of the most influential personages. Not one man in a thousand for instance has ever heard of Major
Wildman: yet he was the soul of English politics in the most eventful period of this kingdom, and one most interesting
to this age, from 1640 to 1688; and seemed more than once to hold the balance which was to decide the permanent form of
our government. But he was the leader of an unsuccessful party. Even, comparatively speaking, in our own times, the
same mysterious oblivion is sometimes encouraged to creep over personages of great social distinction as well as
political importance.

The name of the second Pitt remains, fresh after forty years of great events, a parliamentary beacon. He was the
Chatterton of politics; the “marvellous boy.” Some have a vague impression that he was mysteriously moulded by his
great father: that he inherited the genius, the eloquence, the state craft of Chatham. His genius was of a different
bent, his eloquence of a different class, his state craft of a different school. To understand Mr Pitt, one must
understand one of the suppressed characters of English history, and that is Lord Shelburne.

When the fine genius of the injured Bolingbroke, the only peer of his century who was educated, and proscribed by
the oligarchy because they were afraid of his eloquence, “the glory of his order and the shame,” shut out from
Parliament, found vent in those writings which recalled to the English people the inherent blessings of their old free
monarchy, and painted in immortal hues his picture of a patriot king, the spirit that he raised at length touched the
heart of Carteret born a whig, yet sceptical of the advantages of that patrician constitution which made the Duke of
Newcastle the most incompetent of men, but the chosen leader of the Venetian party, virtually sovereign of England.
Lord Carteret had many brilliant qualities: he was undaunted, enterprising, eloquent; had considerable knowledge of
continental politics, was a great linguist, a master of public law; and though he failed in his premature effort to
terminate the dogeship of George the Second, he succeeded in maintaining a considerable though secondary position in
public life. The young Shelburne married his daughter. Of him it is singular we know less than of his father-in-law,
yet from the scattered traits some idea may be formed of the ablest and most accomplished minister of the eighteenth
century. Lord Shelburne, influenced probably by the example and the traditionary precepts of his eminent father-in-law,
appears early to have held himself aloof from the patrician connection, and entered public life as the follower of Bute
in the first great effort of George the Third to rescue the sovereignty from what Lord Chatham called “the Great
Revolution families.” He became in time a member of Lord Chatham’s last administration: one of the strangest and most
unsuccessful efforts to aid the grandson of George the Second in his struggle for political emancipation. Lord
Shelburne adopted from the first the Bolingbroke system: a real royalty, in lieu of the chief magistracy; a permanent
alliance with France, instead of the whig scheme of viewing in that power the natural enemy of England: and, above all,
a plan of commercial freedom, the germ of which may be found in the long-maligned negotiations of Utrecht, but which in
the instance of Lord Shelburne were soon in time matured by all the economical science of Europe, in which he was a
proficient. Lord Shelburne seems to have been of a reserved and somewhat astute disposition: deep and adroit, he was
however brave and firm. His knowledge was extensive and even profound. He was a great linguist; he pursued both
literary and scientific investigations; his house was frequented by men of letters, especially those distinguished by
their political abilities or economical attainments. He maintained the most extensive private correspondence of any
public man of his time. The earliest and most authentic information reached him from all courts and quarters of Europe:
and it was a common phrase, that the minister of the day sent to him often for the important information which the
cabinet could not itself command. Lord Shelburne was the first great minister who comprehended the rising importance of
the middle class; and foresaw in its future power a bulwark for the throne against “the Great Revolution families.” Of
his qualities in council we have no record; there is reason to believe that his administrative ability was conspicuous:
his speeches prove that, if not supreme, he was eminent, in the art of parliamentary disputation, while they show on
all the questions discussed a richness and variety of information with which the speeches of no statesman of that age
except Mr Burke can compare.

Such was the man selected by George the Third as his champion against the Venetian party after the termination of
the American war. The prosecution of that war they had violently opposed, though it had originated in their own policy.
First minister in the House of Lords, Shelburne entrusted the lead in the House of Commons to his Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the youthful Pitt. The administration was brief, but it was not inglorious. It obtained peace, and for the
first time since the Revolution introduced into modern debate the legitimate principles on which commerce should be
conducted. It fell before the famous Coalition with which “the Great Revolution families” commenced their fiercest and
their last contention for the patrician government of royal England.

In the heat of that great strife, the king in the second hazardous exercise of his prerogative entrusted the
perilous command to Pitt. Why Lord Shelburne on that occasion was set aside, will perhaps always remain a mysterious
passage of our political history, nor have we space on the present occasion to attempt to penetrate its motives.
Perhaps the monarch, with a sense of the rising sympathies of his people, was prescient of the magic power of youth in
touching the heart of a nation. Yet it would not be an unprofitable speculation if for a moment we paused to consider
what might have been the consequences to our country if Mr Pitt had been content for a season again to lead the Commons
under Lord Shelburne, and have secured for England the unrivalled knowledge and dexterity of that statesman in the
conduct of our affairs during the confounding fortunes of the French revolution. Lord Shelburne was the only English
minister competent to the task; he was the only public man who had the previous knowledge requisite to form accurate
conclusions on such a conjuncture: his remaining speeches on the subject attest the amplitude of his knowledge and the
accuracy of his views: and in the rout of Jena, or the agony of Austerlitz, one cannot refrain from picturing the shade
of Shelburne haunting the cabinet of Pitt, as the ghost of Canning is said occasionally to linger about the speaker’s
chair, and smile sarcastically on the conscientious mediocrities who pilfered his hard-earned honours.

But during the happier years of Mr Pitt, the influence of the mind of Shelburne may be traced throughout his policy.
It was Lansdowne House that made Pitt acquainted with Dr Price, a dissenting minister, whom Lord Shelburne when at the
head of affairs courageously offered to make his private secretary, and who furnished Mr Pitt, among many other
important suggestions, with his original plan of the sinking fund. The commercial treaties of ‘87 were struck in the
same mint, and are notable as the first effort made by the English government to emancipate the country from the
restrictive policy which had been introduced by the “glorious revolution;” memorable epoch, that presented England at
the same time with a corn law and a public debt.. But on no subject was the magnetic influence of the descendant of Sir
William Petty more decided, than in the resolution of his pupil to curb the power of the patrician party by an infusion
from the middle classes into the government of the country. Hence the origin of Mr Pitt’s famous and long-misconceived
plans of parliamentary reform. Was he sincere, is often asked by those who neither seek to discover the causes nor are
capable of calculating the effects of public transactions. Sincere! Why, he was struggling for his existence! And when
baffled, first by the Venetian party, and afterwards by the panic of Jacobinism, he was forced to forego his direct
purpose, he still endeavoured partially to effect it by a circuitous process. He created a plebeian aristocracy and
blended it with the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-rate squires and fat graziers. He caught them in the
alleys of Lombard Street, and clutched them from the counting-houses of Cornhill. When Mr Pitt in an age of bank
restriction declared that every man with an estate of ten thousand a-year had a right to be a peer, he sounded the
knell of “the cause for which Hampden had died on the field, and Sydney on the scaffold.”

In ordinary times the pupil of Shelburne would have raised this country to a state of great material prosperity, and
removed or avoided many of those anomalies which now perplex us; but he was not destined for ordinary times; and though
his capacity was vast and his spirit lofty, he had not that passionate and creative genius required by an age of
revolution. The French outbreak was his evil daemon: he had not the means of calculating its effects upon Europe. He
had but a meagre knowledge himself of continental politics: he was assisted by a very inefficient diplomacy. His mind
was lost in a convulsion of which he neither could comprehend the causes nor calculate the consequences; and forced to
act, he acted not only violently, but in exact opposition to the very system he was called into political existence to
combat; he appealed to the fears, the prejudices, and the passions of a privileged class, revived the old policy of the
oligarchy he had extinguished, and plunged into all the ruinous excesses of French war and Dutch finance.

If it be a salutary principle in the investigation of historical transactions to be careful in discriminating the
cause from the pretext, there is scarcely any instance in which the application of this principle is more fertile in
results, than in that of the Dutch invasion of 1688. The real cause of this invasion was financial. The Prince of
Orange had found that the resources of Holland, however considerable, were inadequate to sustain him in his internecine
rivalry with the great sovereign of France. In an authentic conversation which has descended to us, held by William at
the Hague with one of the prime abettors of the invasion, the prince did not disguise his motives; he said, “nothing
but such a constitution as you have in England can have the credit that is necessary to raise such sums as a great war
requires.” The prince came, and used our constitution for his purpose: he introduced into England the system of Dutch
finance. The principle of that system was to mortgage industry in order to protect property: abstractedly, nothing can
be conceived more unjust; its practice in England has been equally injurious. In Holland, with a small population
engaged in the same pursuits, in fact a nation of bankers, the system was adapted to the circumstances which had
created it. All shared in the present spoil, and therefore could endure the future burthen. And so to this day Holland
is sustained, almost solely sustained, by the vast capital thus created which still lingers amongst its dykes. But
applied to a country in which the circumstances were entirely different; to a considerable and rapidly-increasing
population; where there was a numerous peasantry, a trading middle class struggling into existence; the system of Dutch
finance, pursued more or less for nearly a century and a half, has ended in the degradation of a fettered and burthened
multitude. Nor have the demoralizing consequences of the funding system on the more favoured classes been less decided.
It has made debt a national habit; it has made credit the ruling power, not the exceptional auxiliary, of all
transactions; it has introduced a loose, inexact, haphazard, and dishonest spirit in the conduct of both public and
private life; a spirit dazzling and yet dastardly: reckless of consequences and yet shrinking from responsibility. And
in the end, it has so overstimulated the energies of the population to maintain the material engagements of the state,
and of society at large, that the moral condition of the people has been entirely lost sight of.

A mortgaged aristocracy, a gambling foreign commerce, a home trade founded on a morbid competition, and a degraded
people; these are great evils, but ought perhaps cheerfully to be encountered for the greater blessings of civil and
religious liberty. Yet the first would seem in some degree to depend upon our Saxon mode of trial by our peers, upon
the stipulations of the great Norman charters, upon the practice and the statute of Habeas Corpus — a principle native
to our common law, but established by the Stuarts; nor in a careful perusal of the Bill of Rights, or in an impartial
scrutiny of the subsequent legislation of those times, though some diminution of our political franchises must be
confessed, is it easy to discover any increase of our civil privileges. To those indeed who believe that the English
nation — at all times a religious and Catholic people, but who even in the days of the Plantagenets were anti-papal —
were in any danger of again falling under the yoke of the Pope of Rome in the reign of James the Second, religious
liberty was perhaps acceptable, though it took the shape of a discipline which at once anathematized a great portion of
the nation, and virtually establishing Puritanism in Ireland, laid the foundation of those mischiefs which are now
endangering the empire.

That the last of the Stuarts had any other object in his impolitic manoeuvres, than an impracticable scheme to blend
the two churches, there is now authority to disbelieve. He certainly was guilty of the offence of sending an envoy
openly to Rome, who, by the bye, was received by the Pope with great discourtesy; and her Majesty Queen Victoria, whose
Protestantism cannot be doubted, for it is one of her chief titles to our homage, has at this time a secret envoy at
the same court: and that is the difference between them: both ministers doubtless working however fruitlessly for the
same object: the termination of those terrible misconceptions, political and religious, that have occasioned so many
martyrdoms, and so many crimes alike to sovereigns and to subjects.

If James the Second had really attempted to reestablish Popery in this country, the English people, who had no hand
in his overthrow, would doubtless soon have stirred and secured their “Catholic and Apostolic church,” independent of
any foreign dictation; the church to which they still regularly profess their adherence; and being a practical people,
it is possible that they might have achieved their object and yet retained their native princes; under which
circumstances we might have been saved from the triple blessings of Venetian politics, Dutch finance, and French wars:
against which, in their happiest days, and with their happiest powers, struggled the three greatest of English
statesmen — Bolingbroke, Shelburne, and lastly the son of Chatham.

We have endeavoured in another work, not we hope without something of the impartiality of the future, to sketch the
character and career of his successors. From his death to 1825, the political history of England is a history of great
events and little men. The rise of Mr Canning, long kept down by the plebeian aristocracy of Mr Pitt as an adventurer,
had shaken parties to their centre. His rapid disappearance from the scene left both whigs and tories in a state of
disorganization. The distinctive principles of these connexions were now difficult to trace. That period of public
languor which intervenes between the breaking up of parties and the formation of factions now transpired in England. An
exhausted sensualist on the throne, who only demanded from his ministers repose, a voluptuous aristocracy, and a
listless people, were content, in the absence of all public conviction and national passion, to consign the government
of the country to a great man, whose decision relieved the sovereign, whose prejudices pleased the nobles, and whose
achievements dazzled the multitude.

The DUKE OF WELLINGTON brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost
seem to include all others. His public knowledge was such as might be expected from one whose conduct already formed an
important portion of the history of his country. He had a personal and intimate acquaintance with the sovereigns and
chief statesmen of Europe, a kind of information in which English ministers have generally been deficient, but without
which the management of our external affairs must at the best be haphazard. He possessed administrative talents of the
highest order.

The tone of the age, the temper of the country, the great qualities and the high character of the minister,
indicated a long and prosperous administration. The only individual in his cabinet who, from a combination of
circumstances rather than from any intellectual supremacy over his colleagues, was competent to be his rival, was
content to be his successor. In his most aspiring moments, Mr Peel in all probability aimed at no higher reach; and
with youth and the leadership of the House of Commons, one has no reason to be surprised at his moderation. The
conviction that the duke’s government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that
the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and
the fusion of parties the babble of clubs and the tattle of boudoirs.

How comes it then that so great a man, in so great a position, should have so signally failed? Should have broken up
his government, wrecked his party, and so completely annihilated his political position, that, even with his historical
reputation to sustain him, he can since only reappear in the councils of his sovereign in a subordinate, not to say
equivocal, character?

With all those great qualities which will secure him a place in our history not perhaps inferior even to
Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington has one deficiency which has been the stumbling-block of his civil career. Bishop
Burnet, in speculating on the extraordinary influence of Lord Shaftesbury, and accounting how a statesman, so
inconsistent in his conduct and so false to his confederates, should have so powerfully controlled his country,
observes, “HIS STRENGTH LAY IN HIS KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLAND.”

Now that is exactly the kind of knowledge which the Duke of Wellington never possessed.

When the king, finding that in Lord Goderich he had a minister who, instead of deciding, asked his royal master for
advice, sent for the Duke of Wellington to undertake the government, a change in the carriage of his grace was
perceived by some who had the opportunity to form an opinion on such a subject. If one might venture to use such a word
in reference to such a man, we might remark, that the duke had been somewhat daunted by the selection of Mr Canning. It
disappointed great hopes, it baffled great plans, and dispelled for a season the conviction that, it is believed, had
been long maturing in his grace’s mind; that he was the man of the age, that his military career had been only a
preparation for a civil course not less illustrious; and that it was reserved for him to control for the rest of his
life undisputed the destinies of a country, which was indebted to him in no slight degree for its European preeminence.
The death of Mr Canning revived, the rout of Lord Goderich restored, these views.

Napoleon, at St Helena, speculating in conversation on the future career of his conqueror, asked, “What will
Wellington do? After all he has done, he will not be content to be quiet. He will change the dynasty.”

Had the great exile been better acquainted with the real character of our Venetian constitution, he would have known
that to govern England in 1820, it was not necessary to change its dynasty. But the Emperor, though wrong in the main,
was right by the bye. It was clear that the energies that had twice entered Paris as a conqueror, and had made kings
and mediatised princes at Vienna, would not be content to subside into ermined insignificance. The duke commenced his
political tactics early. The cabinet of Lord Liverpool, especially during its latter term, was the hot-bed of many
intrigues; but the obstacles were numerous, though the appointing fate, in which his grace believed, removed them. The
disappearance of Lord Castlereagh and Mr Canning from the scene was alike unexpected. The Duke of Wellington was at
length prime minister, and no individual ever occupied that post more conscious of its power, and more determined to
exercise it.

This is not the occasion on which we shall attempt to do justice to a theme so instructive as the administration of
his grace. Treated with impartiality and sufficient information, it would be an invaluable contribution to the stores
of our political knowledge and national experience. Throughout its brief but eccentric and tumultuous annals we see
continual proof, how important is that knowledge “in which lay Lord Shaftesbury’s strength.” In twenty-four months we
find an aristocracy estranged, without a people being conciliated; while on two several occasions, first, the
prejudices, and then the pretensions of the middle class, were alike treated with contumely. The public was astonished
at hearing of statesmen of long parliamentary fame, men round whom the intelligence of the nation had gathered for
years with confidence, or at least with interest, being expelled from the cabinet in a manner not unworthy of Colonel
Joyce, while their places were filled by second-rate soldiers, whose very names were unknown to the great body of the
people, and who under no circumstances should have aspired beyond the government of a colony. This administration which
commenced in arrogance ended in panic. There was an interval of perplexity; when occurred the most ludicrous instance
extant of an attempt at coalition; subordinates were promoted, while negotiations were still pending with their chiefs;
and these negotiations, undertaken so crudely, were terminated in pique; in a manner which added to political
disappointment personal offence. When even his parasites began to look gloomy, the duke had a specific that was to
restore all, and having allowed every element of power to escape his grasp, he believed he could balance everything by
a beer bill. The growl of reform was heard but it was not very fierce. There was yet time to save himself. His grace
precipitated a revolution which might have been delayed for half a century, and never need have occurred in so
aggravated a form. He rather fled than retired. He commenced his ministry like Brennus, and finished it like the tall
Gaul sent to murder the rival of Sylla, but who dropped his weapon before the undaunted gaze of his intended
victim.

Lord Marney was spared the pang of the catastrophe. Promoted to a high office in the household, and still hoping
that, by the aid of his party, it was yet destined for him to achieve the hereditary purpose of his family, he died in
the full faith of dukism; worshipping the duke and believing that ultimately he should himself become a duke. It was
under all the circumstances an euthanasia; he expired leaning as it were on his white wand and babbling of strawberry
leaves.

Chapter 4

“My dear Charles,” said Lady Marney to Egremont the morning after the Derby, as breakfasting with
her in her boudoir he detailed some of the circumstances of the race, “we must forget your naughty horse. I sent you a
little note this morning, because I wished to see you most particularly before you went out. Affairs,” continued Lady
Marney, first looking round the chamber to see whether there were any fairy listening to her state secrets, “affairs
are critical.”

“No doubt of that,” thought Egremont, the horrid phantom of settling-day seeming to obtrude itself between his
mother and himself; but not knowing precisely at what she was driving, he merely sipped his tea, and innocently
replied, “Why?”

“There will be a dissolution,” said Lady Marney.

“What are we coming in?”

Lady Marney shook her head.

“The present men will not better their majority,” said Egremont.

“I hope not,” said Lady Marney.

“Why you always said, that with another general election we must come in, whoever dissolved.”

“But that was with the court in our favour,” rejoined Lady Marney mournfully.

“What, has the king changed?” said Egremont. “I thought it was all right.”

“All was right,” said Lady Marney. “These men would have been turned out again, had he only lived three months
more.”

“Lived!” exclaimed Egremont.

“Yes,” said Lady Marney; “the king is dying.”

Slowly delivering himself of an ejaculation, Egremont leant back in his chair.

“He may live a month,” said Lady Marnev; “he cannot live two. It is the greatest of secrets; known at this moment
only to four individuals, and I communicate it to you, my dear Charles, in that absolute confidence which I hope will
always subsist between us, because it is an event that may greatly affect your career.”

“How so, my dear mother?”

“Marbury! I have settled with Mr Tadpole that you shall stand for the old borough. With the government in our hands,
as I had anticipated at the general election, success I think was certain: under the circumstances which we must
encounter, the struggle will be more severe, but I think we shall do it: and it will be a happy day for me to have our
own again, and to see you in Parliament, my dear child.”

“Well, my dear mother, I should like very much to be in Parliament, and particularly to sit for the old borough; but
I fear the contest will be very expensive,” said Egremont inquiringly.

“Oh! I have no doubt,” said Lady Marney, “that we shall have some monster of the middle class, some tinker or
tailor, or candlestick-maker, with his long purse, preaching reform and practising corruption: exactly as the liberals
did under Walpole: bribery was unknown in the time of the Stuarts; but we have a capital registration, Mr Tadpole tells
me. And a young candidate with the old name will tell,” said Lady Marney, with a smile: “and I shall go down and
canvass, and we must do what we can.”

“I have great faith in your canvassing,” said Egremont; “but still, at the same time, the powder and shot —”

“Are essential,” said Lady Marney, “I know it, in these corrupt days: but Marney will of course supply those. It is
the least he can do: regaining the family influence, and letting us hold up our heads again. I shall write to him the
moment I am justified,” said Lady Marney, “perhaps you will do so yourself, Charles.”

“Why, considering I have not seen my brother for two years, and we did not part on the best possible terms —”

“But that is all forgotten.”

“By your good offices, dear mother, who are always doing good: and yet,” continued Egremont, after a moment’s pause,
“I am not disposed to write to Marney, especially to ask a favour.”

“Well, I will write,” said Lady Marney; “though I cannot admit it is any favour. Perhaps it would be better that you
should see him first. I cannot understand why he keeps so at the Abbey. I am sure I found it a melancholy place enough
in my time. I wish you had gone down there, Charles, if it had been only for a few days.”

“Well I did not, my dear mother, and I cannot go now. I shall trust to you. But are you quite sure that the king is
going to die?”

“I repeat to you, it is certain,” replied Lady Marney, in a lowered voice, but a decided tone; “certain, certain,
certain. My authority cannot be mistaken: but no consideration in the world must throw you off your guard at this
moment; breathe not the shadow of what you know.”

At this moment a servant entered and delivered a note to Lady Marney, who read it with an ironical smile. It was
from Lady St Julians, and ran thus:—

“Most confidential.

“My dearest Lady Marney,

“It is a false report: he is ill, but not dangerously; the hay fever; he always has it; nothing more: I will tell my
authority when we meet; I dare not write it. It will satisfy you. I am going on with my quadrille.

“Most affectionately yours, “A. St J.”

“Poor woman! she is always wrong,” said Lady Marney throwing the note to Egremont. “Her quadrille will never take
place, which is a pity, as it is to consist only of beauties and eldest sons. I suppose I must send her a line,” and
she wrote:

“My dearest Lady St Julians,

“How good of you to write to me, and send me such cheering news! I have no doubt you are right: you always are: I
know he had the hay fever last year. How fortunate for your quadrille, and how charming it will be! Let me know if you
hear anything further from your unmentionable quarter.

“Ever your affectionate “C.M.”

Chapter 5

Lord Marney left several children; his heir was five years older than the next son Charles who at
the period of his father’s death was at Christchurch and had just entered the last year of his minority. Attaining that
age, he received the sum of fifteen thousand pounds, his portion, a third of which amount his expenditure had then
already anticipated. Egremont had been brought up in the enjoyment of every comfort and every luxury that refinement
could devise and wealth furnish. He was a favourite child. His parents emulated each other in pampering and indulging
him. Every freak was pardoned, every whim was gratified. He might ride what horses he liked, and if he broke their
knees, what in another would have been deemed a flagrant sin, was in him held only a proof of reckless spirit. If he
were not a thoroughly selfish and altogether wilful person, but very much the reverse, it was not the fault of his
parents, but rather the operation of a benignant nature that had bestowed on him a generous spirit and a tender heart,
though accompanied with a dangerous susceptibility that made him the child and creature of impulse, and seemed to set
at defiance even the course of time to engraft on his nature any quality of prudence. The tone of Eton during the days
of Charles Egremont was not of the high character which at present distinguishes that community. It was the unforeseen
eve of the great change, that, whatever was its purpose or have been its immediate results, at least gave the first
shock to the pseudo-aristocracy of this country. Then all was blooming; sunshine and odour; not a breeze disturbing the
meridian splendour. Then the world was not only made for a few, but a very few. One could almost tell upon one’s
fingers the happy families who could do anything, and might have everything. A school-boy’s ideas of the Church then
were fat-livings, and of the State, rotten-boroughs. To do nothing and get something, formed a boy’s ideal of a manly
career. There was nothing in the lot, little in the temperament, of Charles Egremont, to make him an exception to the
multitude. Gaily and securely he floated on the brilliant stream. Popular at school, idolized at home, the present had
no cares, and the future secured him a family seat in Parliament the moment he entered life, and the inheritance of a
glittering post at court in due time, as its legitimate consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed the principle of
his existence. The contingency of a mitre, the certainty of rich preferment, would not reconcile him to the
self-sacrifice which, to a certain degree, was required from a priest, even in those days of rampant Erastianism. He
left the colonies as the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a profession being limited to a barrack in a
London park, varied by visits to Windsor. But there was time enough to think of these things. He had to enjoy Oxford as
he had enjoyed Eton. Here his allowance from his father was extravagant, though greatly increased by tithes from his
mother’s pin-money. While he was pursuing his studies, hunting and boating, driving tandems, riding matches, tempering
his energies in the crapulence of boyish banquets, and anticipating life, at the risk of expulsion, in a miserable
mimicry of metropolitan dissipation, Dukism, that was supposed to be eternal, suddenly crashed.

The Reform Act has not placed the administration of our affairs in abler hands than conducted them previously to the
passing of the measure, for the most efficient members of the present cabinet with some very few exceptions, and those
attended by peculiar circumstances, were ministers before the Reform Act was contemplated. Nor has that memorable
statute created a Parliament of a higher reputation for public qualities, such as politic ability, and popular
eloquence, and national consideration, than was furnished by the old scheme. On the contrary; one house of Parliament
has been irremediably degraded into the decaying position of a mere court of registry, possessing great privileges, on
condition that it never exercises them; while the other chamber that, at the first blush, and to the superficial,
exhibits symptoms of almost unnatural vitality, engrossing in its orbit all the business of the country, assumes on a
more studious inspection somewhat of the character of a select vestry, fulfilling municipal rather than imperial
offices, and beleaguered by critical and clamorous millions, who cannot comprehend why a privileged and exclusive
senate is required to perform functions which immediately concern all, which most personally comprehend, and which many
in their civic spheres believe they could accomplish in a manner not less satisfactory, though certainly less
ostentatious.

But if it have not furnished us with abler administrators or a more illustrious senate, the Reform Act may have
exercised on the country at large a beneficial influence. Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the public mind? Has it
cultured the popular sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? Has it proposed to the people of England a higher test
of national respect and confidence than the debasing qualification universally prevalent in this country since the
fatal introduction of the system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a spirit of rapacious coveteousness,
desecrating all the humanities of life, has been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a half, since
the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder
each other by virtue of philosophic phrases, to propose an Utopia to consist only of WEALTH and TOIL, this has been the
breathless business of enfranchised England for the last twelve years, until we are startled from our voracious strife
by the wail of intolerable serfage.

Are we then to conclude, that the only effect of the Reform Act has been to create in this country another of those
class interests, which we now so loudly accuse as the obstacles to general amelioration? Not exactly that. The indirect
influence of the Reform Act has been not inconsiderable, and may eventually lead to vast consequences. It set men
a-thinking; it enlarged the horizon of political experience; it led the public mind to ponder somewhat on the
circumstances of our national history; to pry into the beginnings of some social anomalies which they found were not so
ancient as they had been led to believe, and which had their origin in causes very different to what they had been
educated to credit; and insensibly it created and prepared a popular intelligence to which one can appeal, no longer
hopelessly, in an attempt to dispel the mysteries with which for nearly three centuries it has been the labour of party
writers to involve a national history, and without the dispersion of which no political position can be understood and
no social evil remedied.

The events of 1830 did not produce any change in the modes of thought and life of Charles Egremont. He took his
political cue from his mother, who was his constant correspondent. Lady Marney was a distinguished “stateswoman,” as
they called Lady Carlisle in Charles the First’s time, a great friend of Lady St Julians, and one of the most eminent
and impassioned votaries of Dukism. Her first impression on the overthrow of her hero was, astonishment at the
impertinence of his adversaries, mingled with some lofty pity for their silly ambition and short-lived career. She
existed for a week in the delightful expectation of his grace being sent for again, and informed every one in
confidence, that “these people could not form a cabinet.” When the tocsin of peace, reform, and retrenchment sounded,
she smiled bitterly; was sorry for poor Lord Grey of whom she had thought better, and gave them a year, adding with
consoling malice, “that it would be another Canning affair.” At length came the Reform Bill itself, and no one laughed
more heartily than Lady Marney; not even the House of Commons to whom it was presented.

The bill was thrown out, and Lady Marney gave a grand ball to celebrate the event, and to compensate the London
shopkeepers for the loss of their projected franchise. Lady Marney was preparing to resume her duties at court when to
her great surprise the firing of cannon announced the dissolution of Parliament. She turned pale; she was too much in
the secrets of Tadpole and Taper to be deceived as to the consequences; she sank into her chair, and denounced Lord
Grey as a traitor to his order.

Lady Marney who for six months had been writing to her son at Oxford the most charming letters, full of fun,
quizzing the whole Cabinet, now announced to Egremont that a revolution was inevitable, that all property would be
instantly confiscated, the poor deluded king led to the block or sent over to Hanover at the best, and the whole of the
nobility and principal gentry, and indeed every one who possessed anything, guillotined without remorse.

Whether his friends were immediately to resume power, or whether their estates ultimately were to be confiscated,
the practical conclusion to Charles Egremont appeared to be the same. Carpe diem. He therefore pursued his career at
Oxford unchanged, and entered life in the year 1833, a younger son with extravagant tastes and expensive habits, with a
reputation for lively talents though uncultivated — for his acquisitions at Eton had been quite puerile, and
subsequently he had not become a student — with many manly accomplishments, and with a mien and visage that at once
took the fancy and enlisted the affections. Indeed a physiologist would hardly have inferred from the countenance and
structure of Egremont the career he had pursued, or the character which attached to him. The general cast and
expression of his features when in repose was pensive: an air of refinement distinguished his well-moulded brow; his
mouth breathed sympathy, and his rich brown eye gleamed with tenderness. The sweetness of his voice in speaking was in
harmony with this organization.

Two years passed in the most refined circles of our society exercised a beneficial influence on the general tone of
Egremont, and may be said to have finished his education. He had the good sense and the good taste not to permit his
predilection for sports to degenerate into slang; he yielded himself to the delicate and profitable authority of woman,
and, as ever happens, it softened his manners and brightened his wit. He was fortunate in having a clever mother, and
he appreciated this inestimable possession. Lady Marney had great knowledge of society, and some acquaintance with
human nature, which she fancied she had fathomed to its centre; she piqued herself upon her tact, and indeed she was
very quick, but she was so energetic that her art did not always conceal itself; very worldly, she was nevertheless not
devoid of impulse; she was animated and would have been extremely agreeable, if she had not restlessly aspired to wit;
and would certainly have exercised much more influence in society, if she had not been so anxious to show it.
Nevertheless, still with many personal charms, a frank and yet, if need be, a finished manner, a quick brain, a lively
tongue, a buoyant spirit, and a great social position. Lady Marney was universally and extremely popular; and adored by
her children, for indeed she was a mother most affectionate and true.

When Egremont was four-and-twenty, he fell in love — a real passion. He had fluttered like others from flower to
flower, and like others had often fancied the last perfume the sweetest, and then had flown away. But now he was
entirely captivated. The divinity was a new beauty; the whole world raving of her. Egremont also advanced. The Lady
Arabella was not only beautiful: she was clever, fascinating. Her presence was inspiration; at least for Egremont. She
condescended to be pleased by him: she signalized him by her notice; their names were mentioned together. Egremont
indulged in flattering dreams. He regretted he had not pursued a profession: he regretted he had impaired his slender
patrimony; thought of love in a cottage, and renting a manor; thought of living a good deal with his mother, and a
little with his brother; thought of the law and the church; thought once of New Zealand. The favourite of nature and of
fashion, this was the first time in the life of Egremont, that he had been made conscious that there was something in
his position which, with all its superficial brilliancy, might prepare for him, when youth had fled and the blaze of
society grown dim, a drear and bitter lot.

He was roused from his reveries by a painful change in the demeanour of his adored. The mother of the Lady Arabella
was alarmed. She liked her daughter to be admired even by younger sons when they were distinguished, but only at a
distance. Mr Egremont’s name had been mentioned too often. It had appeared coupled with her daughters, even in a Sunday
paper. The most decisive measures were requisite, and they were taken. Still smiling when they met, still kind when
they conversed, it seemed, by some magic dexterity which even baffled Egremont, that their meetings every day grew
rarer, and their opportunities for conversation less frequent. At the end of the season, the Lady Arabella selected
from a crowd of admirers equally qualified, a young peer of great estate, and of the “old nobility,” a circumstance
which, as her grandfather had only been an East India director, was very gratifying to the bride.

This unfortunate passion of Charles Egremont, and its mortifying circumstances and consequences, was just that
earliest shock in one’s life which occurs to all of us; which first makes us think. We have all experienced that
disheartening catastrophe, when the illusions first vanish; and our balked imagination, or our mortified vanity, first
intimates to us that we are neither infallible nor irresistible. Happily ’tis the season of youth for which the first
lessons of experience are destined; and bitter and intolerable as is the first blight of our fresh feelings, the
sanguine impulse of early life bears us along. Our first scrape generally leads to our first travel. Disappointment
requires change of air; desperation change of scene. Egremont quitted his country, never to return to it again; and
returned to it after a year and a-half’s absence, a much wiser man. Having left England in a serious mood, and having
already tasted with tolerable freedom of the pleasures and frivolities of life, he was not in an inapt humour to
observe, to enquire, and to reflect. The new objects that surrounded him excited his intelligence; he met, which indeed
is the principal advantage of travel, remarkable men, whose conversation opened his mind. His mind was worth opening.
Energies began to stir of which he had not been conscious; awakened curiosity led him to investigate and to read; he
discovered that, when he imagined his education was completed, it had in fact not commenced; and that, although he had
been at a public school and a university, he in fact knew nothing. To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great
step to knowledge. Before an emancipated intellect and an expanding intelligence, the great system of exclusive manners
and exclusive feelings in which he had been born and nurtured, began to tremble; the native generosity of his heart
recoiled at a recurrence to that arrogant and frigid life, alike devoid of sympathy and real grandeur.

In the early spring of 1837, Egremont reentered the world, where he had once sparkled, and which he had once
conceived to comprise within its circle all that could interest or occupy man. His mother, delighted at finding him
again under her roof, had removed some long-standing coolness between him and his elder brother; his former
acquaintance greeted him with cordiality, and introduced him to the new heroes who had sprung up during the season of
his absence. Apparently Egremont was not disinclined to pursue, though without eagerness, the same career that had
originally engaged him. He frequented assemblies, and lingered in clubs; rode in the park, and lounged at the opera.
But there was this difference in his existence, before and since his travels: he was now conscious he wanted an object;
and was ever musing over action, though as yet ignorant how to act. Perhaps it was this want of being roused, that led
him, it may be for distraction, again to the turf. It was a pursuit that seemed to him more real than the life of
saloons, full of affectation, perverted ideas, and factitious passions. Whatever might be the impulse Egremont however
was certainly not slightly interested in the Derby; and though by no means uninstructed in the mysteries of the turf,
had felt such confidence in his information that, with his usual ardour, he had backed to a considerable amount the
horse that ought to have won, but which nevertheless only ran a second.

Chapter 6

Notwithstanding the confidence of Lady St Julians, and her unrivalled information, the health of the
king did not improve: but still it was the hay fever, only the hay fever. An admission had been allowed to creep into
the Court Circular, that “his majesty has been slightly indisposed within the last few days;” but then it was soon
followed by a very positive assurance, that his majesty’s favourite and long-matured resolution to give a state banquet
to the knights of the four orders, was immediately to be carried into effect. Lady St Julians had the first information
of this important circumstance; it confirmed her original conviction: she determined to go on with her quadrille.
Egremont, with something interesting at stake himself, was staggered by this announcement, and by Lady St Julians’
unshaken faith. He consulted his mother: Lady Marney shook her head. “Poor woman!” said Lady Marney, “she is always
wrong. I know,” continued her ladyship, placing her finger to her lip, “that Prince Esterhazy has been pressing his
long-postponed investiture as a Grand Cross, in order that he may dine at this very banquet; and it has been announced
to him that it is impossible, the king’s health will not admit of it. When a simple investiture is impossible, a state
banquet to the four orders is very probable. No,” said Lady Marney with a sigh; “it is a great blow for all of us, but
it is no use shutting our eyes to the fact. The poor dear king will never show again.”

And about a week after this there appeared the first bulletin. From that instant, though the gullish multitude
studied the daily reports with grave interest; their hopes and speculations and arrangements changing with each phrase;
for the initiated there was no suspense. All knew that it was over; and Lady St Julians, giving up her quadrille, began
to look about for seats in parliament for her sons.

“What a happiness it is to have a clever mother,” exclaimed Egremont, as he pondered over the returns of his
election agent. Lady Marney, duly warned of the impending catastrophe, was experiencing all the advantages of prior
information. It delighted her to meet Lady St Julians driving distractedly about town, calling at clubs, closeted with
red tapers, making ingenious combinations that would not work, by means of which some one of her sons was to stand in
coalition with some rich parvenu; to pay none of the expenses and yet to come in first. And all this time, Lady Marney,
serene and smiling, had the daily pleasure of assuring Lady St Julians what a relief it was to her that Charles had
fixed on his place. It had been arranged indeed these weeks past; “but then, you know,” concluded Lady Marney in the
sweetest voice and with a blandishing glance, “I never did believe in that hay fever.”

In the meantime the impending event changed the whole aspect of the political world. The king dying before the new
registration was the greatest blow to pseudo-toryism since his majesty, calling for a hackney coach, went down and
dissolved parliament in 1831. It was calculated by the Tadpoles and Tapers that a dissolution by Sir Robert, after the
registration of 1837, would give him a clear majority, not too great a one, but large enough: a manageable majority;
some five-and-twenty or thirty men, who with a probable peerage or two dangling in the distance, half-a-dozen positive
baronetcies, the Customs for their constituents, and Court balls for their wives, might be induced to save the state.
0! England, glorious and ancient realm, the fortunes of thy polity are indeed strange! The wisdom of the Saxons, Norman
valour, the state-craft of the Tudors, the national sympathies of the Stuarts, the spirit of the latter Guelphs
struggling against their enslaved sovereignty — these are the high qualities, that for a thousand years have secured
thy national developement. And now all thy memorial dynasties end in the huckstering rule of some thirty unknown and
anonymous jobbers! The Thirty at Athens were at least tyrants. They were marked men. But the obscure majority, who
under our present constitution are destined to govern England, are as secret as a Venetian conclave. Yet on their dark
voices all depends. Would you promote or prevent some great measure that may affect the destinies of unborn millions,
and the future character of the people — take, for example, a system of national education — the minister must
apportion the plunder to the illiterate clan; the scum that floats on the surface of a party; or hold out the prospect
of honours, which are only honourable when in their transmission they impart and receive lustre; when they are the meed
of public virtue and public services, and the distinction of worth and of genius. It is impossible that the system of
the thirty can long endure in an age of inquiry and agitated spirit like the present. Such a system may suit the
balanced interests and the periodical and alternate command of rival oligarchical connections: but it can subsist only
by the subordination of the sovereign and the degradation of the multitude; and cannot accord with an age, whose genius
will soon confess that Power and the People are both divine.

“He can’t last ten days,” said a whig secretary of the treasury with a triumphant glance at Mr Taper as they met in
Pall Mall; “You’re out for our lives.”

“Don’t you make too sure for yourselves,” rejoined in despair the dismayed Taper. “It does not follow that because
we are out, that you are in.”

“How do you mean?”

“There is such a person as Lord Durham in the world,” said Mr Taper very solemnly.

“Pish,” said the secretary.

“You may pish,” said Mr Taper, “but if we have a radical government, as I believe and hope, they will not be able to
get up the steam as they did in — 31; and what with church and corn together, and the Queen Dowager, we may go to the
country with as good a cry as some other persons.”

“I will back Melbourne against the field, now,” said the secretary.

“Lord Durham dined at Kensington on Thursday,” said Taper, “and not a whig present.”

“Ay; Durham talks very fine at dinner,” said the secretary, “but he has no real go in him. When there is a Prince of
Wales, Lord Melbourne means to make Durham governor to the heir apparent, and that will keep him quiet.”

“What do you hear?” said Mr Tadpole, joining them; “I am told he has quite rallied.”

“Don’t you flatter yourself,” said the secretary.

“Well, we shall hear what they say on the hustings,” said Tadpole looking boldly.

“Who’s afraid!” said the secretary. “No, no, my dear fellow, you are dead beat; the stake is worth playing for, and
don’t suppose we are such flats as to lose the race for want of jockeying. Your humbugging registration will never do
against a new reign. Our great men mean to shell out, I tell you; we have got Croucher; we will denounce the Carlton
and corruption all over the kingdom; and if that won’t do, we will swear till we are black in the face, that the King
of Hanover is engaged in a plot to dethrone our young Queen:” and the triumphant secretary wished the worthy pair good
morning.

“They certainly have a very good cry,” said Taper mournfully.

“After all, the registration might be better,” said Tadpole, “but still it is a very good one.”

The daily bulletins became more significant; the crisis was evidently at hand. A dissolution of parliament at any
time must occasion great excitement; combined with a new reign, it inflames the passions of every class of the
community. Even the poor begin to hope; the old, wholesome superstition still lingers, that the sovereign can exercise
power; and the suffering multitude are fain to believe that its remedial character may be about to be revealed in their
instance. As for the aristocracy in a new reign, they are all in a flutter. A bewildering vision of coronets, stars,
and ribbons; smiles, and places at court; haunts their noontide speculations and their midnight dreams. Then we must
not forget the numberless instances in which the coming event is deemed to supply the long-sought opportunity of
distinction, or the long-dreaded cause of utter discomfiture; the hundreds, the thousands, who mean to get into
parliament, the units who dread getting out. What a crashing change from lounging in St James’s street to sauntering on
Boulogne pier; or, after dining at Brookes and supping at Crockford’s, to be saved from destruction by the friendly
interposition that sends you in an official capacity to the marsupial sympathies of Sydney or Swan River!

Now is the time for the men to come forward who have claims; claims for spending their money, which nobody asked
them to do, but which of course they only did for the sake of the party. They never wrote for their party, or spoke for
their party, or gave their party any other vote than their own; but they urge their claims — to something; a
commissionership of anything, or a consulship anywhere; if no place to be had, they are ready to take it out in
dignities. They once looked to the privy council, but would now be content with an hereditary honour; if they can have
neither, they will take a clerkship in the Treasury for a younger son. Perhaps they may get that in time; at present
they go away growling with a gaugership; or, having with desperate dexterity at length contrived to transform a
tidewaiter into a landwaiter. But there is nothing like asking — except refusing.

Hark! it tolls! All is over. The great bell of the metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the last son of
George the Third who probably will ever reign in England. He was a good man: with feelings and sympathies; deficient in
culture rather than ability; with a sense of duty; and with something of the conception of what should be the character
of an English monarch. Peace to his manes! We are summoned to a different scene.

In a palace in a garden — not in a haughty keep, proud with the fame, but dark with the violence of ages; not in a
regal pile, bright with the splendour, but soiled with the intrigues, of courts and factions — in a palace in a garden,
meet scene for youth, and innocence, and beauty — came the voice that told the maiden she must ascend her throne!

The council of England is summoned for the first time within her bowers. There are assembled the prelates and
captains and chief men of her realm; the priests of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the sword that has
conquered, the votaries of the craft that has decided the fate of empires; men grey with thought, and fame, and age;
who are the stewards of divine mysteries, who have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe, who have toiled in secret
cabinets, who have struggled in the less merciful strife of aspiring senates; men too, some of them, lords of a
thousand vassals and chief proprietors of provinces, yet not one of them whose heart does not at this moment tremble as
he awaits the first presence of the maiden who must now ascend her throne.

A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would attempt to conceal the excitement, which some of the greatest of
them have since acknowledged, fills that brilliant assemblage; that sea of plumes, and glittering stars, and gorgeous
dresses. Hush! the portals open; She comes! The silence is as deep as that of a noontide forest. Attended for a moment
by her royal mother and the ladies of her court, who bow and then retire, VICTORIA ascends her throne; a girl, alone,
and for the first time, amid an assemblage of men.

In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of august duty
than an absence of emotion, THE QUEEN announces her accession to the throne of her ancestors, and her humble hope that
divine providence will guard over the fulfilment of her lofty trust.

The prelates and captains and chief men of her realm then advance to the throne, and kneeling before her, pledge
their troth, and take the sacred oaths of allegiance and supremacy.

Allegiance to one who rules over the land that the great Macedonian could not conquer; and over a continent of which
even Columbus never dreamed: to the Queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone.

It is not of these that I would speak; but of a nation nearer her foot-stool, and which at this moment looks to her
with anxiety, with affection, perhaps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and beauty of the Saxon. Will it be
her proud destiny at length to bear relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand which might inspire
troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the chain of Saxon thraldom?